Plans are well advanced for the
Mini John Cooper Works WRC
engines to be prepared in future at
Prodrive in Britain rather than the parent
factory at BMW in Germany.
The engines due to be used at
the forthcoming Wales Rally GB are
therefore due to be the last time that
the world championship cars are to run
German prepared engines.
Prodrive state that it had always
been the hope that they would be able
to develop the 1.6 litre turbo direct
injection rally engines in Britain rather
than having to buy-in German prepared
engines, which had been developed
alongside the engines used in touring
car racing. German sources have been
quoted as saying that BMW’s originally
planned development programme
has now come to an end and BMW’s
attention was now directed towards a
DTM racing project.
The engines to be prepared at this
time at Prodrive will continue to be
based on production rather than special
Global designs.
Exciting rumours were circulating the service park at
Rally Catalunya of a proposed new M-Spor t Junior
team, featuring current Stobart team drivers Mads
ostberg and Matthew Wilson.
Ostberg has just turned 24, while Wilson is nine months
older. Wilson was the original centre of Stobart’s rally
promotion work before the company expanded into full WRC
activity, while Ostberg has been running under the Stobart
banner during 2011.
Ostberg finished second in Sweden 2011 on his first
appearance in a Ford World Rally Car, gaining Stobart’s best
WRC result to date. In the 11 WRC rounds that Ostberg has
contested this year, he has twice finished highest placed
customer driver, another four times the best customer driver
except for his compatriot the former world champion Petter
Solberg, and three times has suffered mechanical problems
- twice a broken transmission casing (Portugal and Jordan,
failures which have since seriously handicapped him under
restricted transmission availability rules) and once a broken
subframe (Greece).
35 year-old Luca Rossetti has won the FIA’s European Rally
championship for the third time in four years, as a result of
gaining supplemental championship points for lying top
ERC registered driver at the end of the first leg of Rallye
International du Valais.
The first leg of the Swiss event comprised the first three of
the event’s 17 stages. “Rox” Rossetti is the first driver to win the
FIA’s longest running series outright three times, bettering the
record of the legendar y Polish driver Sobieslaw Zasada who
won the series outright once and his category twice some 40
years ago.
This is the 59th time the series has been run and it is the
third year running that the series was won by a Fiat driver, rare
occurrences in current day rallying. This has been the 13th
season for the Prata di Pordenone driver, who first won the
European series as a driver for the Italian Racing Lions Peugeot
team before being enlisted as a works Fiat driver.
After Fiat ended their official rally programme Rossetti
continued to compete in Fiats as a privateer, winning the
European series two years running. Rossetti was forced to
retire from Valais when leading early on Day 2 with alternator
belt failure, letting Portuguese driver Bernardo Sousa in front,
but then Sousa stopped with transmission trouble leaving
Swiss drivers to dominate their home event.
New Junior Team planned ...
Three Stages to the title
4